When ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos asked Mary Trump in an exclusive interview on Tuesday what she would say if given the opportunity to address her uncle, her answer was clear: “Resign.”
“He is utterly incapable of leading this country, and it’s dangerous to allow him to do so,” Mary Trump told Stephanopoulos in her first televised interview on Tuesday since she was released from a court gag order to speak freely about her blockbuster tell-all book that hit shelves on July 14.
Mary Trump, who is a clinical psychologist, said that the president grew up in a “dysfunctional” family that believed “money stood in” for acts of love and one whose patriarch used his own kin as “pawns.” She said that the backdrop of the nation’s leader, who is seeking a second-term, has created a “quite dangerous situation” for Americans since he was elected to office in 2016.
In the interview, Mary Trump delved into her family history, describing her grandfather, Fred Trump, as a “sociopath” who pushed his children — including the president — to “succeed at all costs,” to view people as “expendable,” and to “do anything to get attention, financial rewards, and to ‘win.’”
Donald Trump’s father “was incredibly driven in a way that turned other people, including his children [and] wife, into pawns to be used to his own ends,” Mary Trump said.
Her book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” which was released after a legal battle she fought alongside publisher Simon & Schuster, takes an intimate dive into the president’s family life and upbringing from her own memories, conversations with family members, and legal, financial and family documents.
The White House has condemned the book as a money-grubbing move.
“Mary Trump and her book’s publisher may claim to be acting in the public interest, but this book is clearly in the author’s own financial self-interest,” the White House said in a statement obtained by ABC News.
The White House has also denied a claim in the book that was hotly discussed after the detail was leaked ahead of the book’s released — that the president had allowed someone else to take the SAT exam on his behalf. While the White House dismissed the book as a work full of “falsehoods” and “absurd allegations,” Mary Trump defended the claim in her Tuesday interview, saying that she was, “absolutely confident” that someone else took the SAT exam for her uncle, and that she learned what happened from “a source very close to Donald.”
Mary Trump’s uncle Robert, the president’s younger brother, pressed a court to block the book’s release, citing a 20-year-old confidentiality agreement she had signed in a settlement regarding her grandfather’s will. In another attempt to prevent Mary Trump for promoting or speaking publicly about the book, a New York judge sided with Mary Trump on Monday enabling her to launch full-scale promotion and to discuss the contents of her controversial tell-all.
She had charged herself with using the book to alert the public based on her firsthand knowledge of the president, saying she has witnessed “the collateral damage” that can be come from allowing someone to act “without accountability.” In her view, it is “striking” to watch those attitudes continue to play out on “a much grander scale.”
